


Pulsations

by FievreAlgide



Category: French Revolution RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-25
Updated: 2008-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FievreAlgide/pseuds/FievreAlgide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’ve always wanted to write a story with Robespierre and Saint-Just discussing – preferably in bed *coughs* – of the “afterlife”. Here I finally have it. :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulsations

The sky was grey and the smell of rain was still fresh in the air, humid and heavy. It had rained earlier in the afternoon. The leaves of the trees contrasted with their bright green colour.

Pleasantly, Saint-Just noted to himself that Robespierre’s eyes seemed to contrast with that same hue of green.

The two men had chosen to take a longer path than usual to return home. Walking along the Seine, they quietly discussed the afternoon’s session at the Convention. For a short moment, the two men fell silent, contemplating the paradoxes of the urban nature surrounding them. Robespierre watched the busy coaches bringing their bourgeois passengers safely back home. He looked at the mud covering half the wheels, coming up to the knees of the horses and, next to these, the mud covering the boots of the workers.

At first, Robespierre didn’t notice that he had continued walking with no one by his side anymore. He turned, realising that Saint-Just had stopped behind. He saw the younger man looking silently, thoughtfully, at the Seine and at the other bank of the river. Robespierre walked toward him.

“Forgive me,” he said, smiling embarrassedly. “You have to tell me if you stop, otherwise I won’t notice. It’s happened to me so often already. You wouldn’t want to hear Charlotte telling of her many memories concerning this bad habit of mine.”

Saint-Just smiled timidly. Frankly, he felt as embarrassed for this. “No, it’s all right,” he muttered. “I didn’t realise. I was only thinking…” He stopped in the middle of his sentence, letting out a broken sigh and frowning. Robespierre looked confused.

“Are you well?”

“I feel slightly fatigued,” the young man replied.

“You should go to sleep when you return home.”

“I dislike sleeping.”

It came out quite naturally, as a soft murmur – even though the phrase itself suggested profound irritation. Robespierre knew what to reply to such an answer—an answer he had already given himself many times before. “There is so much to do and so little time,” Robespierre added, simply. “What do you dislike about sleeping?”

Saint-Just stared at the quiet stream of the Seine, the water looking slightly troubled by the afternoon rain.

“Solitude,” Saint-Just sighed, before explaining his mysterious answer. “We all sleep at the same time, together, and yet we are lonely in our sleep, lonely with ourselves, our thoughts turning to folly and inconsistency. As if we were our own enemies. Is this why man feels so lonely?”

 _“And thus I am alone on Earth,”_ Robespierre whispered. _“Having no brother, no fellow, no friend, no society but myself… I would love men in spite of themselves. Once they stopped being men, they lost my affection. Here they have become strangers, unknown, nothing for me, since they wanted it this way. But I, detached from them and from everything, what am I myself?”_

The young man turned towards his friend, looking at him as he finished quoting. He smiled. “Jean-Jacques,” he immediately guessed. “First Promenade.”

Looking down at his hands bashfully, Robespierre smiled, nostalgic for the times when he had memorised all of his favourite passages from Rousseau. “Solitude is also unbearable to me,” Robespierre explained. “Even though I’ve had so much time to tame it, it still terrifies me.”

Saint-Just looked at him. “You’re not lonely anymore,” he whispered, a comforting and dreamy smile on his lips. “Don’t you feel all the affection you receive?”

“I refuse to be a centre of affection,” the older man noted, firmly, a bit coldly – with a tone suddenly perplexing his friend. “Besides, all the affection of the world could never fill up the crushing feeling of solitude. Once it has struck you, it never leaves you.”

Silent once more, feeling nothing could be replied or added to this, the two men watched the Seine.

Saint-Just blinked, as if he were waking from a trance, or merely terrible thoughts.

“Sometimes I fear they are right and that death resembles sleeping.”

Suddenly concerned and worried by such a statement, Robespierre turned towards his friend, his eyes insistent, asking for the other man to look at him. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“You can still trust death because we don’t know it. We cannot know it. I like to imagine it’s innocent, peaceful, that there is no malignity hiding in the place that awaits us once we’ve given up our life.”

Even though the subject was quite morbid, Saint-Just smiled, both with confusion and amusement. From the serious tone Robespierre had used, he couldn’t tell if this was meant to comfort him or not. After a moment of looking at his friend fondly, Robespierre now the one staring blankly at the Seine, Saint-Just walked behind him. “I think we better return home,” he announced. “I fear those heavy clouds above us are going to burst again.”

Suddenly, Robespierre’s hand reached for Saint-Just’s sleeve, calling for his friend’s attention. Saint-Just could feel the fingers grasping at his arm beneath the fabric and turned to look at the other man.

“Can I come with you?” Robespierre muttered, shyly. His green eyes were intent.

Saint-Just nodded. They smiled to each other, and said nothing more.

***

Their lips touched as they passed the front door of Saint-Just’s apartment, shutting it behind them. Careless, the young man threw his soaked hat to a chair next to his desk. Robespierre’s joined his. On their way back to the Hôtel des États-Unis, on Gaillon Street, they had been surprised by a violent rain – as Saint-Just had predicted. They were both irritated by the disagreeable feeling of wet clothes – Robespierre slightly more – but the urgency of their touching overcame their thoughts.

Hands moved nervously over the many layers of clothing, undoing the buttons here and there, tugging at the thick and soaked fabrics. They removed their frock coats almost simultaneously, letting them fall to the floor. Robespierre thought to pick them up and hang them to the backs of two chairs. As he gestured to do so, Saint-Just stopped him, gripping his arms and pushing the older man towards a wall. Saint-Just grinned before closing his lips on Robespierre’s again, reaching for the desired warmth of the other man’s chest, fingers sliding up the shirt to undo the knot of his cravat. The older man’s hands gripped at his friend’s waist, feeling the wet material tightening to the skin.

As well, Robespierre pushed his friend against another wall. Saint-Just groaned, clasping the shoulders of the man… who then escaped from his embrace and stepped back. Gesturing for the younger man to give him a short moment, he picked up the coats and placed them neatly on the back of the two chairs next to Saint-Just’s desk, just as he had had in mind. Saint-Just laughed quietly, amused. Robespierre finished taking off his cravat, placing it on the desk. Next to it, he put his wig – which, fortunately, was still dry.

When he was done with his task, he returned to Saint-Just, who was still smiling and patiently waiting for him. They embraced closely and kissed. Saint-Just held the older man’s shoulders tightly with his right arm, while the fingers of his other hand ran through the man’s still tied but messy hair.

Finally, Saint-Just released him from his grip. They took off what remained of their clothes before they wet the bedcovers on which they fell, both with fatigue and desire. They lay, side by side, moving over the bed as they had done many times before. A day like the rare few they had known together.

Outside, the rain had become more vigorous, beating against the windows, against the walls. Thunder could be heard in the distance. The humidity was diminishing, slightly, but not between the two men. They moved against each other, the wetness of rain replaced by that of sweat, sticking to them. Saint-Just rolled on top of his friend, kissing his neck, exploring the other man’s body with his lips. Robespierre stroked his friend’s hair, then his left cheek. His touch lingered around Saint-Just’s ear, feeling on the way the metallic coldness of a hoop earring.

Robespierre tensed and shivered as he felt the younger man’s hair lightly caressing the skin of his stomach.

***

Robespierre moved up, bringing the bedsheets with him to warm them both. For one moment, he lost himself in the great brown eyes of the other man, who was lying under him. One moment, in his eyes. Saint-Just smiled to him, pushing the hair from Robespierre’s face with the back of his right hand. Robespierre kissed the other man’s cheeks, one after the other, in a friendly manner, before whispering his left ear, _“Je t’aime.”_ Saint-Just kissed the man’s right cheek in return, replying, _“Je t’aime aussi.”_

Robespierre moved down the man’s chest, kissing and nibbling the side of his waist. Saint-Just gasped, stifling laughter, and gripped his friend’s shoulders. The older man smiled and rose up to rest against the left side of the man’s chest, stopping right there.

After a few motionless minutes, Saint-Just started wondering. “What is it?”

Robespierre’s answer came as a peculiar question.

“Do you think souls feel a form of suffering?”

Saint-Just was slightly confused, at first, but not too nonplussed by a type of questioning to which he had submitted his own mind too for so long. A few years before, he might have replied, teasingly, that he was no theologian to pronounce on such matters. But not today, and especially not to Maximilien, who seemed to take these subjects seriously – especially at the moment, as his voice suggested.

“I suppose – and hope – they don’t,” Saint-Just answered, determined to cling to this one belief. But as soon as he had said it, doubt clouded his mind. “Though it depends on the type of suffering, and on the condition of the soul. Do you mean moral suffering? Before or after death?”

Robespierre ignored the new questions, completing the question he had first asked. “Do you think souls suffer to know that the people are miserable?”

The question was bizarre, the younger man considered, but this was not the first thing that came to his mind. “Who’s soul?” Saint-Just muttered with frustration. “I doubt the souls of the rich and the aristocrats cry.”

Robespierre smiled, slightly. He hadn’t expected this answer. “Do you think social distinctions can still be seen in souls?” he asked, amused.

“I don’t know, Maxime. I don’t think we can legislate on the social inequalities of souls,” Saint-Just let out a sigh, withdrawing from this meaningless game. None of this was enlightening him on Robespierre’s goal with this strange argumentation. “Why are you asking all of this?”

“Your heart is beating fast.”

Saint-Just concluded that Robespierre was decidedly stubborn, skipping to unrelated subjects, not revealing what he had had in mind to begin with. But he didn’t insist. He had to admit that he was quite touched by what his friend had just whispered.

“Are you listening to my heart?” the young man asked, a bright and wide smile suddenly drawn on his lips.

“Yes,” Robespierre simply replied. “I love listening to hearts.”

This statement too was slightly bizarre, but Saint-Just didn’t ask any more questions. As he stroked the older man’s hair, a flash of memory came to Robespierre’s mind.

The smell of another rainy day…

He saw a very young boy, sitting on a bench in a dark corridor. A girl, one year younger, was hugging to the boy’s sleeve, auburn curls partially hiding her face. Not far from them, two women, their aunts, were watching over them. One of the two was cradling a baby boy, sleeping; the other was combing, with her fingers, the hair of another girl, a toddler.

An older woman’s crying suddenly came to Robespierre’s ears. He shut his eyes.

Behind a door, on one side of the corridor, the boy could see a priest speaking to a man who was obstinately keeping silent, merely nodding, head low, arms crossed over his chest, which was regularly shaken with deep sighs.

Not far from the bench, so close to the boy, a door left half open by the elderly woman who was still crying, coming out of the room to take the young girl on the bench in her arms, whispering soft, comforting words to her and to the other children.

Only one moment of inattention, long enough for the older boy to escape from the watchful eyes of the adults around him.

Running to the room where his mother lay, running to her arms and shaking her out of her sleep. But she didn’t wake. The woman was ghastly pale and immobile, but it didn’t bother the boy, who embraced her nevertheless.

Before his grandmother took him away from his last embrace with his mother, the young boy had time to notice that, inside of her chest, there was no heart pulse.

“Maximilien?”

Robespierre blinked. It wasn’t the voice of his grandmother, scolding him from a farther past and then crying with him for being so insensitive in doing so.

The heart he was listening to at the moment was beating, as all the hearts he had had (rarely) occasion to listen to ever since his mother had died.

 

 

The End.  


**Author's Note:**

> The dialogue on sleep was written over one month ago – more precisely, back when my modem was broken and I was conveniently feeling very alone, a bit like I’m feeling now. Hence, why I re-used the dialogue. Originally, it was used in a different – but typical – scene where Saint-Just and Robespierre were working late in the former’s apartment. I decided to put it in this fic instead, because I had planned nothing in particular for them to discuss while looking at the Seine.
> 
> This story is set in summer 1793, probably June or July, when there are many rainy and stormy days. It would be pointlessly sadistic to set it in summer 1794, hence why it will be 1793, though there’s no actual chronological elements to spot the precise context.
> 
> Forgive the romantic, byron-esque weather fitting so well the emotions. The only reason why I decided it would be a rainy and stormy day was because, well, when I started writing it (or rather when I was searching for something to write) it was a rainy and stormy day. *facepalm*
> 
> Beta’ed by [](http://estellacat.livejournal.com/profile)[**estellacat**](http://estellacat.livejournal.com/)


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